


Queen of Mirth and Mayhem

by aokoyasumi



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: F/M, I guess I tried, Jurdan is killing me, Post-Wicked King, Slow Burn, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-09-28 15:17:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17185430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aokoyasumi/pseuds/aokoyasumi
Summary: SPOILERS FOR THE WICKED KING.After Jude has been exiled, she attempts to rebuild her life and begins her schemes anew to have her sweet revenge. However, she must face not only Faerie's deadly intrigues but her own contradicting feelings towards Cardan, who approaches her secretly to share disturbing secrets. Is he forgivable? Sure as hell not, Jude thinks. But truth is rarely as simple as that...This fic has not been abandoned - updates are slow right now due to busy year but will be updated seriously over the summer. Sorry for the wait and thanks to all the ones who are asking me to continue!





	1. Chapter 1

Queen of mirth and mayhem

Prologue 

Exile in the mortal lands drove Jude to despair in a way nothing had in a long time, not since Madoc had come with his deadly blade to murder her parents and with it all the naivete of a mortal childhood. Then, she’d been exiled to Faerie, a strange, dangerous realm full of nightmares – and yet this time, it felt even worse, somehow, to be back to her original home. It did not feel like home anymore, it was just a well of pity in which she drowned every day, loathing Madoc, loathing Cardan, loathing herself, herself, always herself. She hated that she had been defeated, that she had trusted and hoped and still lost in the end. She hated how weak, how pathetically weak she’d been that last day, as Cardan solemnly, powerfully sentenced her, and she had not been able to do one thing, one damn thing about it. Most of all, she hated herself for letting go of the power she’d fought for every day of her life, the power she’d obtained excruciating scrap by excruciating scrap. She’d let it all go for a promise, a dream, a lie.

But laying about hating the world did not help. Jude Duarte could be many things, but never was she ever able to give up. Her nature itself told her to fight, and so fight she did. She could not change the decisions she had made, nor the mistakes. But she was sure of one thing: She would have her revenge, she would have Faerie, or else she would die. Faerie was her home – it was cruel, unforgiving, not even accepting, but she had chosen it as her home, as her ambition and she’d be damned if she didn’t fight for it.

She did not know what to make of Cardan. Mostly, she tried to keep her feelings for him, and his for her, out of her thoughts. She tried to focus on scheming, politics and battles, on his newly-recovered identity as enemy. She did not want to remember burning kisses, shaken breaths and marriage vows. How hilarious, how laughable! She was his wife, she was a queen. Jude Duarte, Queen of Faerie. But exiled and unbeknownst to her people, she was nothing. Just a queen of mirth, that everyone mocked. The poor little mortal, look how funny she is, thinking herself a queen! 

“Jude! Wake uuuuup!” Oak exclaims. “Look what comment Miss Thorne gave me in my end of term report!”

Sometimes it felt as though Oak was her only victory. At least, whatever else had happened, Oak was safe from the Court and its murderous intrigues. 

“Told you I was good at school!” he shouts excitingly. 

“No one said the opposite, Oak. Good job, though.” Vivi answers. She turns her head towards her sister. “Have you filled up your daily dose of sulking? Because I need to start mine and Oak needs someone to cook dinner.”

In the two weeks since Jude had started her exile, Heather had not contacted Vivi once. Neither one of them blamed the other for the mourning they seemed to be sharing.   
Taryn neither had said a word. Of course, Jude hadn’t expect her to have done so, considering she had betrayed Jude. 

“What I need is a good plan.” She sighs. She really needed one.

“What you need is to put the chicken nuggets in the microwave, Jude. Move your ass.”

She did as she was told, moving through the mundane routines of mortal life. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was enough for her, power – power was as addicting as the poisons she had forced herself to ingest, she yearned for it though she could not ignore the costs it brought. She had lost her twin to it, and Madoc, the closest person she had to a dad. And Cardan, who could have been something more but had betrayed her just like all the others she had cared for. Or at least, all those who cared for Faerie’s treachery more than her. Vivi was too disinterested to fight about power and Oak still too young and protected from its vices to understand the threats that they entail.

Power was not something you owned but something that owned you. Jude had changed in many ways since she started playing the Great Game, the game of kings and princes, of queens and crowns. She had become even more pitiless. 

But she did not care, so long as she would win.


	2. Of dreams and claws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for supporting me through this new story - after your kind feedback, I became determined to make this a multi chapter full story. Please keep reading and tell me what you think!

A semblance of peace had settled, albeit reluctantly, in Jude’s life. Mornings, she’d send Oak to school, buying him a breakfast on the way; then, she’d go back home, train, chat with Vivi, eat, train some more, then pick Oak from school, because Vivi worked the afternoons. Jude did not get a job - she didn’t even try. Finding work would shatter the illusion that this was only temporary, it would hint that she’d always stay, never go home in Faerie. They didn’t need the money anyway, as Vivi simply charmed random leaves and bits of paper into dollar bills. 

She hated and loved and hated the domesticity of it. She remembers dreaming of such a life as a child: living with her sister, money coming in without efforts, just idling along everyday. 

It was a nightmare.

So when one Tuesday night she woke to the - almost silent, so skilled but inexperienced - opening of her window, and her right hand sneaked under her pillow where she hid a blade while the left balled into a fist beneath the bed sheets, she could not be described otherwise than delightfully surprised, in the wrongest and most twisted way. Her body ached for the adrenaline rushes of intense fights, and her mind needed a distraction to restrain from overthinking everything. 

All in all, it was thus very welcomed that he slid, on that cool Tuesday night, inside her room; though, of course, Jude did not yet know his identity. As of then, he was but a dark silhouette looming over the bed frame, staying excruciatingly immobile while Jude, eyes nonchalantly closed, counted her faked slow breaths and puffs of air. Patience was key, self control - she could hear her heart beat too fast, thump thump thump inside her chest, hoping he couldn’t while muffling down her excitement and fear (for, yes, she was afraid, but didn’t know whether she was more afraid of being attacked or not being attacked).

A few seconds of agony, then the slight shuffle of trousers as two long legs moved past each other, each quiet step closing the distance from her seemingly sleeping figure. Then, he stopped again - now, now was the time - and she unsheathed her knife, hitting his knee cap and elbowing him as he lost his balance, and - yes, so close now - he grunts, stepping back, distancing himself - wasting time, wasting time - and she rose up and kneed him in the same wounded knee cap - cruel but effective - and now he was really falling and as he did she twisted him around to place the always polished blade on his throat - finally!

She threw back the hood - black, of course, because thieves are always so original - covering his head, increasing the pressure on her right hand, so that a thin sliver of crimson now flowed down a long throat. Midnight hair sprang out, longer, longer than she’d last seen it - longer than she’d last seen it? Ah, of course. Him. She’d thought it would be one of Orlagh’s minions or some similarly valueless pawn, but how dull would that have been when compared to her present catch? After all, she was a queen now, The Queen - who else could she have expected. 

She glared into the abyss of his onyx eyes, the ones she knew so well, where she’d seen hatred, disgust, boredom and consuming lust. They shone strangely bright and amused under the moonlight. Oh, what a scene this was! A reunion worthy of Greek tragedies, full of their perverse irony and a catharsis filled with anxiety. 

“I see your claws are, as ever, sharpened.” He smirked, that familiar rictus distorting his face. “I was beginning to miss their sting.”

She was disoriented, to say the least. She’d wanted a confrontation, but not like this. She’d wanted an opportunity to show her strength, her resolve, her cruelty, no mercy. A statement. But this wasn’t a statement or a threat, this was the Game starting again, and she wasn’t prepared - she didn’t have her brilliant plan yet, and she could see herself again as a pathetic child, crying because there was nothing else to do that was in her power. 

One thing was sure, Cardan was a motherfucking asshole and traitor. But what to do about it? Her mind raced, like it had done so many times already since her exile, in vain. She could kill him, right now, right here. Oh, how satisfying, how relieving! But that would be signing her death sentence and the end of a future in Faerie, unless she sided along with Madoc again, which he was unlikely to accept and anyway she would not, could not put herself at anyone’s mercy and control anymore.

“Your wit, however, has clearly blunted.” She smirked back, with an arrogance and confidence she did not know she could fake. “And I sure could sting you some more, pretty boy. Or, should I say, my darling husband? How has marital life been without your sharp claws wife? I do hope you haven’t tainted my honour me with too many affairs.”

“Why, duller than I can say, evidently. And no, my bed has been unbearably cold since you left. Which is why I seek your famed company, my darli-”

“All right,” she interrupted, “let’s spare each other all this bullshit, you fucking dickhead. What are you here for? The only way my knife is moving is into your throat, so I better like your answer.”

“Won’t you offer me a seat first?” He had the nerve to wink at her. Fucking wink, after all she’d been through because of him. 

That was her limit. Enough.

“No, there is no fucking seat for you here. Crawl away before I stop hesitating whether to kill you or not.”

His eyes, coal like his heart, began to protest. “I- ”

“Oh, you always did make my life complicated.”

With a swing of the hilt of her knife, she knocked him out. She’d find a solution for him later: she could not afford to give away too much now, not when she hadn’t decided what to do with him yet, how she could use him. Discussing now would not end well, she knew herself - either she’d be consumed by her anger, lose control and kill him, or she’d end up losing to him, one way or another. At this dreadful hour of the night, she feared she might even give up, give in to him. She hated him and wanted him and hated that she wanted him. The tension between them was terrifying.

No, she needed her head clear, Her strengths lied elsewhere, she could bide her time - she’d done it for years until she’d gotten the opportunity of the crown. 

Taking the body over her shoulder was difficult, and she remembered the sick feeling of carrying a true corpse on another night, so long ago. Cardan’s blood smearing on her nightclothes itched her. She took the car, dropping him into the trunk, and drove to an interstate before dragging him off by the feet. Once she was satisfied by all these morbid doings, she hopped back onto the car, her heart somehow heavier than before, drove home and went back to bed, weary and anxious and unsure.

When the warm rays of early dawn shone on to her face, she could almost pretend it was all a bad, bad dream.

Except she hadn’t closed an eye, and her room stank of his blood.


End file.
